Eponine's Lament
by Mandy of the Amoeba
Summary: I'm not sure how to summarize this....it's just a short little fic about what Eponine goes through when Marius leaves to bid Cosette farewell.


A/N: Yay, my first Les Miserables fic! Kind of short, I know, and I wasn't sure exactly what category to put it in, since there technically is a separate category for Les Miserables....but, this is based solely off the musical, as I've never read the book and have only seen the movie once, so I decided it should go under musicals. Oh, and I know that Eponine takes Cosette a letter from Marius and that he doesn't actually go tell Cosette goodbye, but....my story doesn't work with that. Besides, maybe he went to tell her goodbye BEFORE he sent the letter. Anyway. Enjoy!  
  
  
Eponine held back tears as she watched him leaving....leaving to be with her. _Her_. Perfect, beautiful Cosette, whom he had only met yesterday and had only set eyes on twice.   
  
"Ponine, she's wonderful." he had breathed in rapture the first time he saw the fair-skinned Cosette in the square. "I have to meet her. Who is she? You've got connections all over Paris, surely you know who she is!"   
  
And so Eponine had told him exactly who Cosette was, right down to the details of how she had been used as a kitchen drudge in the Thernadier Inn as a child. She led him straight to the abby where Cosette lived with her adoptive father, the mystery man who had rescued her from Eponine's abusive parents ten years ago. She listened to him rant on and on about Cosette's beauty, a beauty that he had only seen once. And she had arranged for them to meet.  
  
He had thanked her again and again, calling her his angel and his best friend. She smiled at him and said she was glad to help, when inside she was dying. She had been in love with Marius for years, but she always kept her feelings secret because he seemed to be with a girl every time she thought she might get the courage to tell him.  
  
Now, as Eponine walked along the dingy Paris streets, Marius was on his way to tell his precious Cosette goodbye before he left to join the revolutionary effort. After they had left Cosette's house the night before, he had done nothing but speak of the fair girl's beauty. He talked about her dark, curly hair, her pale, perfect skin, her slender hands and graceful neck, the freckles that smattered her lily white nose, the roses the blushed in her cheeks.   
  
Standing in front of a broken shop window, Eponine gazed at her own reflection. Her hair was even darker than Cosette's, but it was straight and limp. Her skin was lightly tanned, and appeared darker in places because of smeared dirt. There were no cute freckles on her heart-shaped face, nor any roses visible underneath the smudges on her cheeks. Small, short hands ending in dirty fingernails, a neck nothing like a swan's hidden by her loose dark hair and her oversized trenchcoat.   
  
Sighing, she turned away from the window, looking across and down the street at the broken down inn she had called home until last night. She didn't even have a home to go to anymore, not after she had ruined her father's plans for revenge against Cosette's father. There wasn't even much point in trying to sneak back in to get her things; there was nothing in there that she wanted. Her father had disowned her, her mother hadn't seemed to have much use for her ever since she had stopped being a child.  
  
When she was a little girl and Cosette did all the work, Eponine's mother would brush her daughter's hair and call her "my pet", treating her like a pretty little doll. Then Cosette had been spirited away and Eponine had begun to grow too old to be called "L'ange de la Maman" - Mama's angel. She was unwanted by everyone. Sometimes, she felt as if Paris itself shunned her.  
  
So she walked alone along it's sidestreets, until she ended up on a crossroad where the street she was on intersected the Champs Elysees. There was always life and gaity there, no matter how glum the rest of Paris might appear. Smiling a little to herself, Eponine stepped onto the busy street's sidewalk and began walking towards the ABC cafe. If she couldn't have Marius, she would at least join him in his fight.  
  



End file.
